[aviswanathan]

I think turnaround CEOs have the some of the toughest and most public jobs in the industry. The particularly difficult roles are for those individuals that already have a successful past (Mayer with Google) that are then implicitly 'expected' to bring new energy and vitality to companies simply because of those past successes.

Look at Ron Johnson, for example. His genius did wonders for Apple but the same concepts failed with a different industry in his tenure with JCPenney. There's no silver bullet, and what Mayer's doing with Yahoo may have some similarities with what was done early on with Google, but in order to cement Yahoo's independent identity, she's going to have to pursue some goals that aren't identical to things she's done before.

Ending WFH is perhaps a start. The externalities (noisy lashback from media, etc.) don't help, but she's going to have to face a lot more of that in order to institute long-lasting change.

[general_failure]

You know how this works right? Everyone will call crap until the CEO is not doing well. Once the company shows signs of improving, they will immediately talk about the radical things they did and how they told you so.